Toothless Arizona Boycott

Readers sounded off loud and long on our story about the lack of teeth in the L.A. City Council's boycott of Arizona because of its controversial state immigration law, SB1070 ("Toothless Boycott," by Gene Maddaus, Aug. 12).

Los Angeles has not enforced the boycott in any meaningful way. But it now has a chance. The city could refuse to award a $90 million contract to Honeywell to upgrade computer systems at the Hyperion sewage treatment plant in El Segundo (if indeed Honeywell is headquartered in Arizona, a claim the company denies).

Bess Byers writes: "What part of illegal do people not understand? Can someone show me any other country that gets chastised for enforcing its immigration and border laws?

"As an L.A. resident, I support Arizona's immigration law. If our elected officials enforced the laws, maybe we wouldn't have overflowing jails, sky-high crime rates and debt deeper than a black hole. Just saying ...

"Enforcing our border laws isn't racist, it's right."

Danicalifornia writes: "I'm so ashamed to be an L.A. County resident right now. The stupid L.A. City Council talks a big bad game but can't back up its mouth."

Icecld writes: "California is the epicenter of computer technology. Can't L.A. find a company there to program the computer for the sewage? Excuses, excuses. Look into the person hiring Honeywell and notice the new bulge in their pocket. It's a roll of cash — not their genitals."

Chad Krystals writes: "I live in Arizona. Nothing changed because of SB1070. Hispanics and all races of people here still get along, though this law has put a divide in a lot of the community. However, the sewage problem of L.A. is more of an issue and they shouldn't be bickering who should fix it. It should just be taken care of and not have all the extra baggage."

Finally, Rickabrams writes: "The attempt to deny the contract to Honeywell is simply bigotry. No one has shown that Honeywell financed the anti-immigrant law like AEG's chief Phil Anschutz, famous homophobe, backs anti-gay legislation. The city council is only all too glad to do business with his company despite his well-publicized prejudice.

"Honeywell is being attacked not because it did anything wrong, but because it belongs to a group that the City Council does not like. It is not clear what group that may be. ... For all this council knows, the Arizonans who fought most vigorously against the anti-immigrant legislation may work for Honeywell. This law is like firing a rifle into a moving train and when you kill a pregnant woman, you claim that you thought there was a bad person on the train."

Rickabrams doesn't stop there. In fact, our favorite commenter of the year is just getting warmed up.

"L.A. is such a corrupt 'Pay to Play' city that it is a disgrace that this council would even think of dictating how other people should live," he continues. "Let's look at the need to sanitize our City Hall.

"(1) Where's the missing $1.4 million from the Cesspool on Vine?

"(2) Who's getting what with the 49- and 55-story high-rise Garcetti Towers around the Capitol building?

"(3) What happened to the missing $454 million from Hollywood & Highland. $625 M to construct and then sold to CIM Group for $201 M and then Garcetti et alia gave CIM Group another $30 M to rehab the newly built Kodak Theater. That's close to one-half billion dollars and no one wants to know where it went, or maybe they all know and don't want the public to find out.

"(4) Who OK'd CRA's agreeing to pay CIM Group $17.3 M to destroy the tax-paying properties and N. Western and evict people from the St. Francis Hotel?

"(5) How does CIM Group end up with the Spaghetti Factory project on Sunset at Gordon? Does someone know someone in the biblical sense? I don't know but something smells.

"(6) Why is the city giving billionaire Eli Broad $52 M for his 'gold-plated' parking structure while denying the kids in Hollywood a community park?

"(7) Now that AB 26 killed off the CRA, which had sucked over $3 billion in tax dollars out of the property taxes, the city council is reformulating a new CRA to perpetuate the transfer of billions of tax dollars from the city and schools to real estate speculators like CIM Group? Gee, where did we hear that name before?

"The stench of corruption and incompetence arising from the City Council makes regular sewage smell like roses."